Denver 16th Street Pedestrian Mall

The 16th Street Pedestrian Mall is a 16-block long pedestrian mall running through downtown Denver. 16th Street is closed to absolutely all vehicular traffic — including bicycles — EXCEPT for the free mall shuttle buses that circulate regularly up and down 16th Street.

I didn’t think to take a photo of it while I was there, but this pedestrian mall is completely devoid of (wait for it…) pedestrian traffic! Actually, there are plenty of pedestrians, but they’re all jammed onto the ridiculously narrow sidewalks, just like anywhere else in downtown Denver. The street portion is given completely to the mall shuttles, and in fact jaywalking is illegal. Did I mention you can’t bike on 16th? Not only that, pedestrian traffic is so heavy that walking a bike through the sidewalks is impractical.

When I crossed mid-block before taking this photo, a shuttle bus driver actually accelerated and came within inches of running me down! Shortly after taking this photo, I was standing at the edge of the sidewalk — a bus pulled along side me skimming the curb and the side mirror would have hit my head if I didn’t move away at the last minute! One woman on the crosswalk near this sign screamed when the bus driver didn’t slow for her until the very last second.

These shuttle drivers on the pedestrian mall are belligerent to the pedestrians who are in "their" street. I wrote a letter to my RTD representative about this, who ignored it just like the previous two letters I’ve written to him.